Are you into any similar games? Deckbuilding or not (non-collectible; no booster pack randomness)

My first experience with Deckbuilding Games has been with Dominion.

I now currently have all the expansions except Adventures and I've got almost all of the promos (Stash, Governor, Walled Village, Black Market, Envoy) and I'm totally in love with the game.

Dominion sparked an interest in the genre as a whole so when one friend visited me and brought along Star Realms, I found it intriguing as well and decided to buy that one as well.

I've been holding out on Ascension since it's availability is kind of bad here and the fact that there are two types of currencies (Runes and Power) and the middle row keeps changing will surely result in a lot of "Damn... I've only got lots of runes and now there are plenty of monsters out so I'll just have to skip turns and buy more Heavy Infantry to get some Power into my deck ... and vice versa. Although many do think of the game's artwork as horrible, I quite like it from what I've seen. Not everything has to be sharp and colorful. Nearly colorless pictures with sketch lines all over somehow appeals to me equally as much as a more "finished looking" style of artwork.

So... I'm not looking for suggestions. I just generally want to know what other similar games people are into. So far I've liked Dominion and Star Realms and I'm hoping to expand into even more deckbuilding games (and why not tableau building as well? Race for the Galaxy seems similar in some ways, from what I've seen, yet it isn't a deckbuilder... but you're STILL building a tableau).

Oh and "Epic Card Game" (from the makers of Star Realms) is by no means a deckbuilder, but that also looks like a nice one! :)

Core Worlds looks a little bit too mathematical for me, yet also somewhat intriguing. And yes, that one is a deckbuilder... Well sort of.

TL;DR: First experience with Dominion. Now trying out Star Realms. Liking them both. What are you guys into when it comes to even remotely similar styled games?

I dislike most of them. Thunderstone, Trains, Ascension, Star Realms, they're just mostly not as deep and significantly worse in many respects. I'm going to name some I deeply respect.

Eminent Domain - The really interesting mechanism here is that your deck is built not just by purchasing, but by declaring actions, and everyone can follow your action (similar to Puerto Rico). So you are deck building, but you're also advancing a Tableau, and you're doing so in a very interesting manner. Purchaseable cards are fixed (you can buy any card you want when you have the resources) and the game is quite deep. Get the expansion.

Arctic Scavengers - How to describe this? It's... weird. It's a deckbuilder, but what a strange little thing it is. Most deckbuilders are a game of plenty (you can do what you want! Build the deck! Do cool things!). Arctic Scavengers is a game of scarcity. You'll never have enough to do everything you want. It's strangely thematic.

Mage Knight - This is a deckbuilding game in much the same way that Bora Bora is a dice rolling game. I mean yes, you do roll dice in Bora Bora, but that's not quite the entire story. That being said, I'd be remiss not to mention it here.

Don't Turn Your Back - This hybrid worker placement/deck building game solves the Tableau issue of Ascension/Star Realms/et al (what do you do when someone gets a great card that you can't buy) by giving everyone their own personal tableau. It's a tight, brutal game where your cards are your workers (that also do actions), planning ahead is necessary, and Trashing is an actual game mechanic. It's truly an excellent game, a real gem.

I can't comment on the others but Eminent Domain is brilliant. It's simple but very deep. The basic mechanic fixes the 'buy it, throw it in the pile, hope to use it later' play style of Dominion.

Also, it actually pulled me into the theme of the game. It felt something like you are discovering new worlds. Dominion is just playing cards.

The one negative is that the rules are a bit more challenging to grasp. If you just read them, they don't make much sense at first. Lay out some cards and play a couple of hands. After two hands, it all clicked for me. Most of the rules are on the cards so you have to kinda experience them to understand the flow of the game. That ends up making it much easier to actually play once you realize that.

I love Ascension. It's much more seat of the pants because of the center row changes. Sure, that does create moments of frustration, but it creates moments of exultation too, and navigating the two currencies is a strategic challenge.

I like it much better than Star Realms (for which I've only played the base). For one thing the flavor in Ascension is fantastic, while Star Realms is pretty generic. Also deck thinning in Ascension is harder, as is managing the two currencies since there are fewer cards that grant both.

You can get the Ascension app for Android or iOS, which is a great implementation, and comes with the base game free.

Another sort of deckbuilding game I play is Quarriors!, which is about as far away from Dominion in terms of strategy as you can get. It is fundamentally not a great game (the rules are clunky), but the dice are really cool, and it's fun to chuck a handful of them.

One thing I dislike about Ascension is that it's pretty effectively broken if you're just playing the base game. You'll win 9/10 games by just completely ignoring power and going for full Mechana Constructs.

So, it's got a similar problem to the Big Money problem of the base game of Dominion (although Big Money is never the best thing to do, at least in the base game, the cards aren't strong enough to keep up with it). I do still like the game, although I don't think it's quite as good as Dominion, but that's because I don't have any of its expansions (as opposed to all Dominion expansions).

Mechana is a good strategy in the base game, usually very good. But it's not always. Unless you get lucky scalphunting can often beat it, especially with a couple Void cards. Eta: That said, later expansions are certainly better developed. (No surprise there.)

I just downloaded the ascension app after reading this post. I had only played it once before irl. I've just been playing with the base cards, It was pretty fun at first, but after a couple games of trouncing the computer its seeming kinda dull. Also, having not really played against a human yet, maybe there is some element of strategy that I don't see, it just seems like there isn't much room for strategy beyond 'get good cards' and 'get rid of week cards'

I also play Sentinels of the Multiverse. It's more of a card game like Hearthstone but you choose from prebuilt decks and play a cooperative battle against a villain deck. It's worth checking out if you have a passing interest in CCG style games.

So that it doesn't become one auction site ****fest resulting in one guy who's spent the most bang getting all the victories just by obtaining the best cards available :P I never wanted to buy cards out of other players and solely relied on booster packs... to the point where I lost hundreds of euros and then decided to give away everything because none of the cards I bought were of any value...

Never again. Only games that don't rely on "I wonder what I'll be getting inside this booster pack" stuff that usually has power creeping and such.

EDIT: Sorry if I sounded like agitated. I'm really not. I'm not just good at writing anything criticizing (it always ends up sounding bad) :P

Aeon's End is a deckbuilder that is Co-Op. It's on Kickstarter right now, so I haven't gotten a chance to play it. However the designer mentioned using Dominion as its starting point, which means it has the same deck building elements - Money, Trashing, Engine. It also has a non-shuffled deck, which means you can plan your buys and deck-building efficiently. The randomness comes from the order of the player and boss turns.